6 ms·

What if Microsoft open sources GitHub?

by miguelrochefort 8y ago

tedeh 8y ago
May be hard to explain to stock holders looking for return on the acquisition...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- mnky9800n 8y ago
  Msft has been doing a good job of giving a return while also open sourcing everything.
  - tedeh 8y ago
    Say what? Open sourcing everything?
    - unreal37 8y ago
      Microsoft is the largest public user of GitHub, with the most number of checkins to open source projects. Gasp! [1] https://medium.freecodecamp.org/the-top-contributors-to-github-2017-be98ab854e87 https://medium.freecodecamp.org/the-top-contributors-to-gith...
- jbigelow76 8y ago
  The code maintainers that (now) want an open source hosting solution are leaving anyway. Microsoft also already owns a git-as-a-service solution in Visual Studio Team Services. My take is this is another way to get closer to people and orgs that will probably need cloud services of some sort, so make it as easy as possible to choose Azure. I think the OP makes an excellent suggestion, as a dev and a (infinitesimally small) shareholder I would be for it 100%.
- fnord123 8y ago
  One click GitHub Enterprise deployment for Azure.
- veidr 8y ago
  My take on that is: a.) A huge part of GitHub's value is their default-ness. Anybody can build a website UI to git, although it is a lot of engineering work. Gitlab and Bitbucket are somewhere in that equation. People uneasy about MS are all over the Internet talking about moving off of GitHub today. MS announcing that they are open-sourcing GitHub would instantly evaporate a lot of that doubt/resentment/NOFUCKYUOM$!!!!URRRGH. b.) They could also open-core it, not totally open-source it, just like GitLab. Thereby keeping basically all of the more-lucrative enterprise business (that's probably way more comfortable with Microsoft anyway).
  - jasonlotito 8y ago
    > They could also open-core it So, literally not open sourcing it, which defeats the purpose.
  - chemicalcrux 8y ago
    That defaultness is huge. I often catch myself conflating "Git" and "GitHub" because they've been so tightly coupled for me for years.
  - test6554 8y ago
    The main thing github gives microsoft is a pool of people it can try to push into Azure. Azure means that Microsoft no longer needs to care whether you develop apps for windows or linux or mac, or the web. As long as you make and deploy apps to Azure, you can use whatever stack you like. For that reason, they have a strong incentive to keep people happy and on github, and they have a huge incentive to make it easy to deploy from github to azure with a single click or something similar.
- peterwwillis 8y ago
  It ties in nicely with the other open source (compatible) solutions they're trying to make money off of right now. The money is in GitHub Enterprise, and in how they can roll the product's workflow, issue management, and huge developer base seamlessly into their cloud offerings. They don't lose any customers by open sourcing it. Nobody's going to use GitLab if they can just download GitHub, and companies will still pay for Enterprise because they still need support for their massive investment in GitHub's extended features.
veidr 8y ago
I am sad this HN topic isn't trending up more, because THAT would change EVERYTHING. (By which I mean everything whiny MS-skeptics have said today (myself included).) It would be a knockout PR move, suddenly sucking all the wind out of the sails of all knee-jerk-antiMicrosoftism surrounding this acquisition. Satya, bro, you should really take a page out of Apple's playbook, and announce right now that you are going to. (That way, whether you really do[1], or you don't[2], most people won't remember the idea anyway...) [1]: https://swift.org https://swift.org [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FaceTime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FaceTime
- jasonkostempski 8y ago
  I think the people having these reactions aren't going fall for any PR stunts, no matter how grandiose. Even with the OSS they have, they're constantly undermining the spirit with opt-out telemetry, some even forced, in fundamental tools, and they are unapologetic about it. Even if they announced they were taking all that out, I wouldn't trust it to last, or that they wouldn't use that PR to leverage something even worse.
  - bradrydzewski 8y ago
    fwiw gitlab also has opt-out telemetry that includes identifiable data such as instance hostname https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/user/admin_area/settings/usage_statistics.html#usage-ping https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/user/admin_area/settings/usage_st...
- sverhagen 8y ago
  Not an Apple follower, could you explain the "Apple's playbook" reference?
  - veidr 8y ago
    Oh, it's in those two footnotes: Apple pre-announced that they were going to open source Swift, and then they did, and they did a great job and there was much rejoicing. But there was some skepticism, because Steve Jobs had previously announced they were going to open-source their FaceTime technology so non-Apple platforms could adopt it and it could become a cross-platform communications system... but they never did. Both announcements got people excited, though. EDIT: Okay, my bad; I stand corrected. I remembered him saying that in 2012, but I googled it after lowtolerance disputed my claim, and what he actually said was, "We’re going to the standards bodies, starting tomorrow, and we’re going to make FaceTime an open industry standard.”
dis-sys 8y ago
ballmer will have a heart attack.
giancarlostoro 8y ago
I too wonder if they would. It would be for the best if they did. They have a lot more to gain if they did and GitHub already has an enterprise self hosted option so I assume its already generic enough code wise to be redeployed anywhere.
Aardwolf 8y ago
That won't help with the hosting, the github.com URLs of tons of public projects, the community, followers, etc...
- exikyut 8y ago
  Oh boy the amount of language and infrastructure tooling that's going to change from "code hosting" to "supports github and gitlab" GitLab should treat GitHub as S3 and copy everything. I don't mean the git part, I mean the GitHub API bits that run on top.
  - Aardwolf 8y ago
    I don't fully understand what you mean, please help me understand. Why would the generic term "code hosting" change to two brand names, and what does S3 have to do with all this?
    - exikyut 8y ago
      Sure, sorry. By "code hosting" I mean that most places say "we support code hosting" but in reality their systems are only setup to work with/use github.com; the domain at the very least, and possibly the API on top of that. Now places are going to have to generalize a bit, at the very least by thinking of multiple domains. There are undoubtedly going to be tiny differences between how gitlab handles things; those will surface over time. They probably won't make headlines, but they'll cause tiny localized headaches. As for S3, I mean that the GitHub API (issue tracking, etc) is all non-git proprietary stuff. GitLab should copy that so people's workflows Just Work™. I have no idea if they've already done this, I'm sure they've considered it.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
kakwa_ 8y ago
I'm not sure it would be really useful. Github is more a service than a software, you need tons of components to make it work (Elastic Search, a DB, haproxy or nginx, a lot of ruby, a few C/C++ libraries, a few python libraries, etc) it's a big beast. I know they provide VM images for Github Enterprise, but IIRC, it was quite a big beast, requiring at least 16GB of RAM a fast CPU with many cores and a large disk last time I looked (3 or 4 years ago). And there was a lot of stuff in that image. If I had the source code, I'm not sure I would be able to properly deploy it and maintain, even with some documentation. Too many moving parts. And I feel a lot of sysadmins would be in the same situation. There are some services that open source there code. Travis-ci is the one I've in mind, yet I don't know of any deployments outside of travis-ci.

What if Microsoft open sources GitHub?

tedeh 8y ago

May be hard to explain to stock holders looking for return on the acquisition...

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
mnky9800n 8y ago
Msft has been doing a good job of giving a return while also open sourcing everything.
- tedeh 8y ago
  Say what? Open sourcing everything?
  - unreal37 8y ago
    Microsoft is the largest public user of GitHub, with the most number of checkins to open source projects. Gasp! [1] https://medium.freecodecamp.org/the-top-contributors-to-github-2017-be98ab854e87 https://medium.freecodecamp.org/the-top-contributors-to-gith...
jbigelow76 8y ago
The code maintainers that (now) want an open source hosting solution are leaving anyway. Microsoft also already owns a git-as-a-service solution in Visual Studio Team Services. My take is this is another way to get closer to people and orgs that will probably need cloud services of some sort, so make it as easy as possible to choose Azure. I think the OP makes an excellent suggestion, as a dev and a (infinitesimally small) shareholder I would be for it 100%.
fnord123 8y ago
One click GitHub Enterprise deployment for Azure.
veidr 8y ago
My take on that is: a.) A huge part of GitHub's value is their default-ness. Anybody can build a website UI to git, although it is a lot of engineering work. Gitlab and Bitbucket are somewhere in that equation. People uneasy about MS are all over the Internet talking about moving off of GitHub today. MS announcing that they are open-sourcing GitHub would instantly evaporate a lot of that doubt/resentment/NOFUCKYUOM$!!!!URRRGH. b.) They could also open-core it, not totally open-source it, just like GitLab. Thereby keeping basically all of the more-lucrative enterprise business (that's probably way more comfortable with Microsoft anyway).
- jasonlotito 8y ago
  > They could also open-core it So, literally not open sourcing it, which defeats the purpose.
- chemicalcrux 8y ago
  That defaultness is huge. I often catch myself conflating "Git" and "GitHub" because they've been so tightly coupled for me for years.
- test6554 8y ago
  The main thing github gives microsoft is a pool of people it can try to push into Azure. Azure means that Microsoft no longer needs to care whether you develop apps for windows or linux or mac, or the web. As long as you make and deploy apps to Azure, you can use whatever stack you like. For that reason, they have a strong incentive to keep people happy and on github, and they have a huge incentive to make it easy to deploy from github to azure with a single click or something similar.
peterwwillis 8y ago
It ties in nicely with the other open source (compatible) solutions they're trying to make money off of right now. The money is in GitHub Enterprise, and in how they can roll the product's workflow, issue management, and huge developer base seamlessly into their cloud offerings. They don't lose any customers by open sourcing it. Nobody's going to use GitLab if they can just download GitHub, and companies will still pay for Enterprise because they still need support for their massive investment in GitHub's extended features.

veidr 8y ago

I am sad this HN topic isn't trending up more, because THAT would change EVERYTHING. (By which I mean everything whiny MS-skeptics have said today (myself included).) It would be a knockout PR move, suddenly sucking all the wind out of the sails of all knee-jerk-antiMicrosoftism surrounding this acquisition. Satya, bro, you should really take a page out of Apple's playbook, and announce right now that you are going to. (That way, whether you really do[1], or you don't[2], most people won't remember the idea anyway...) [1]: https://swift.org https://swift.org [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FaceTime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FaceTime

jasonkostempski 8y ago
I think the people having these reactions aren't going fall for any PR stunts, no matter how grandiose. Even with the OSS they have, they're constantly undermining the spirit with opt-out telemetry, some even forced, in fundamental tools, and they are unapologetic about it. Even if they announced they were taking all that out, I wouldn't trust it to last, or that they wouldn't use that PR to leverage something even worse.
- bradrydzewski 8y ago
  fwiw gitlab also has opt-out telemetry that includes identifiable data such as instance hostname https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/user/admin_area/settings/usage_statistics.html#usage-ping https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/user/admin_area/settings/usage_st...
sverhagen 8y ago
Not an Apple follower, could you explain the "Apple's playbook" reference?
- veidr 8y ago
  Oh, it's in those two footnotes: Apple pre-announced that they were going to open source Swift, and then they did, and they did a great job and there was much rejoicing. But there was some skepticism, because Steve Jobs had previously announced they were going to open-source their FaceTime technology so non-Apple platforms could adopt it and it could become a cross-platform communications system... but they never did. Both announcements got people excited, though. EDIT: Okay, my bad; I stand corrected. I remembered him saying that in 2012, but I googled it after lowtolerance disputed my claim, and what he actually said was, "We’re going to the standards bodies, starting tomorrow, and we’re going to make FaceTime an open industry standard.”

dis-sys 8y ago

ballmer will have a heart attack.

giancarlostoro 8y ago

I too wonder if they would. It would be for the best if they did. They have a lot more to gain if they did and GitHub already has an enterprise self hosted option so I assume its already generic enough code wise to be redeployed anywhere.

Aardwolf 8y ago

That won't help with the hosting, the github.com URLs of tons of public projects, the community, followers, etc...

exikyut 8y ago
Oh boy the amount of language and infrastructure tooling that's going to change from "code hosting" to "supports github and gitlab" GitLab should treat GitHub as S3 and copy everything. I don't mean the git part, I mean the GitHub API bits that run on top.
- Aardwolf 8y ago
  I don't fully understand what you mean, please help me understand. Why would the generic term "code hosting" change to two brand names, and what does S3 have to do with all this?
  - exikyut 8y ago
    Sure, sorry. By "code hosting" I mean that most places say "we support code hosting" but in reality their systems are only setup to work with/use github.com; the domain at the very least, and possibly the API on top of that. Now places are going to have to generalize a bit, at the very least by thinking of multiple domains. There are undoubtedly going to be tiny differences between how gitlab handles things; those will surface over time. They probably won't make headlines, but they'll cause tiny localized headaches. As for S3, I mean that the GitHub API (issue tracking, etc) is all non-git proprietary stuff. GitLab should copy that so people's workflows Just Work™. I have no idea if they've already done this, I'm sure they've considered it.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

kakwa_ 8y ago

I'm not sure it would be really useful. Github is more a service than a software, you need tons of components to make it work (Elastic Search, a DB, haproxy or nginx, a lot of ruby, a few C/C++ libraries, a few python libraries, etc) it's a big beast. I know they provide VM images for Github Enterprise, but IIRC, it was quite a big beast, requiring at least 16GB of RAM a fast CPU with many cores and a large disk last time I looked (3 or 4 years ago). And there was a lot of stuff in that image. If I had the source code, I'm not sure I would be able to properly deploy it and maintain, even with some documentation. Too many moving parts. And I feel a lot of sysadmins would be in the same situation. There are some services that open source there code. Travis-ci is the one I've in mind, yet I don't know of any deployments outside of travis-ci.